$300M Invested In Food Tech & Media In Q1 2014, Meet The App That Aims To Be The Digital Food Network + More

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From meal kit giant Blue Apron’s massive $50 million Series C announcement to funding news for the reusable shipping vessel/software startup that aims to improve food distribution and decrease food waste, these are last week’s top food tech stories. Like what you read? Feast your eyes on the full roundup here. Or better yet, sign up for our newsletter and get the latest and greatest in food tech delivered to your inbox every week.

1. Food Tech Media Startup Funding, M&A and Partnerships: March 2014

Q1 of 2014 finished with $300m + of private investment in the food tech & media sector and 12 notable acquisitions.

2. Look & Cook Partners With Amazon Fire TV: Aims To Be The Digital Food Network

The recipe app provides detailed instructions for making and perfecting dozens of celebrity chef dishes. The new partnership will drastically broaden its customer base, as the app will come standard on a whopping 12 million devices.

3. Q&A With SITU: The Smart Food Scale That Counts Calories For You

SITU launched a Kickstarter campaign in early April and raised over 110 percent of its goal. We chat with creator Michael Grothaus about SITU’s target market, data sources, differentiating factors and more.

4. 5 Cool Things We Learned About Food and Technology from Small Bytes – SF Weekly

The Bold Italic and General Assembly’s panel explored how we can begin to answer questions of food shortages, the impact of technology on food production and distribution, and what iPhone-operated drones carrying lettuce have to do with anything.

5. Caviar Raises $13M to Challenge Grubhub, Help Top Chefs Deliver – Wall Street Journal

Funded by Tiger Global’s venture fund, the startup plans to use it to maintain a high quality of service for both restaurants and customers while expanding geographically in the U.S.

6. Blue Apron Raises $50M to Deliver Do-It-Yourself Meal Kits, Recipes – Wall Street Journal

Stripes Group led the Series C investment joined by the startup’s earlier backers, including Bessemer Venture Partners and First Round Capital. Investors involved in the deal confirmed a post-money valuation of $500 million for the startup.

7. FreshRealm Gets $10M For Food Technology – SocalTech

The funding came from Impermanence, LLC. FreshRealm is developing a temperature-controlled, resuable shipping vessel and cloud-based software aimed at improving food distribution and reducing food waste.

8. Amazon’s New Wearable Technology Hub Showcases the Latest Smartwatches, Activity Trackers, and More – The Next Web

It also educates customers through its Learning Center, includes buying guides for a few different wearable categories and has a library of videos that demonstrate some of the retailer’s most popular products.

9. New ‘PareUp’ App Gives You Cheap Dibs On Retailers’ Excess Food Before They Toss It – Huffington Post

The startup has already partnered with a handful of coffee shops and bakeries in New York City, including Oslo Coffee Roasters, PushCart Coffee and Breads Bakery.